


Connect the Dots

by VesperRegina



Category: Galileo (TV Japan)
Genre: 30kisses, Community: cottoncandy_bingo, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 10:31:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VesperRegina/pseuds/VesperRegina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lazy morning cuddles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Connect the Dots

**Author's Note:**

> Let's tick off the prompts, shall we?: 30 Kisses - '#10', Cotton Candy Bingo - 'being silly' and 'private'. This story got away from me and I think I may be retreading old ground, but I'm just going to go ahead and post it. Unbetaed; please let me know if anything is amiss. I hope you enjoy it!

He wakes to the weight of Kaoru close by, and the pressure of white light just beyond the barrier of his eyelids. The day has progressed late into the morning, and even though he feigns sleep, the stutter of his breath gives him away. She breathes a laugh, so he peers out through slitted eyes, giving up the pretense, even though he would have liked more time to understand why he'd felt her fingertips on his face. He asks, "And what exactly are you doing?"

"You know what I was doing. You want to know why." Her face is beside his, propped up on the bend of her wrist. She lifts her free hand, folding all but her index finger, before his eyes. He blinks and looks past it to her. She doesn't need to know that she almost startled him into narrowing his focus on it, an action that surely would have resulted in crossed eyes. She smiles at him as though she suspects, however, her mouth closed, piquant, familiar and yet not, like he'd seen that particular smile not on her, but someone else. 

"You were trying to wake me." He looks away, holds his breath for a moment, sure she'll catch the half-truth in his statement. Her touch had been very light. Of course she hadn't been trying to wake him.

"Incorrect."

She raises herself more, coming over him, her hair falling in a messy curtain, tangled into waves from sleeping on it wet. She blocks the light. He doesn't move, just examines her expression, the glimmer of hidden mischief in the curved corners of her eyes. She touches under his nose, with unbearable delicacy, and says, her tone casual and unconcerned, "Hey, you know, Yukawa...." The mischief drops away, leaving her face intent. Her voice fades to a whisper, the last syllable trailing off into just aspiration, as she moves her fingertips over his skin, drags them down across his lips. His breath catches, an involuntary response, as is the way his lips part. 

He has to swallow before he can ask, "Yes?" 

"It's fun to count these," she says, "like this. One...." She touches under his eye with one finger, then passes the palm of her hand over his nose; it fills with the scent of lavender glycerin soap, still clinging to her skin. "Two." She moves down to another spot on his cheek, and it's plain by this point that she's counting the moles on his skin, and he suppresses a smile as she moves on. Her touch is light and she stops counting when she reaches nine.

"You're forgetting one," he says, when she stops, when he can gather breath, when she settles her head beside him on the pillow, curling her hands beneath her chin, looking at him with a disingenuous steady gaze. 

"No, I don't think I am."

He narrows his eyes and draws breath to disagree. It fails in his mouth, as she hooks her leg over him, sliding over until she rests against him, the full length of her body and weight a soft and comfortable trap. She sidles up, and puts her lips to the side of his neck, and whispers, "Ten."

"There are more," he says, though it comes out hoarse and low, as tense as his body's initial reaction to her covering him.

Kaoru squirms down, and rests her chin on his breastbone, her eyes wide, innocent, as if she's not aware of exactly what she's doing. "I'm done counting for now."

"Is that so?"

"Yes." She smiles that cattish smile again, triggering memory -- it is Kishitani's smile he's recalling, the smile that indicates she's gotten her way -- a forcible reminder that Misa and her mentor are much in each other's presence now. It's difficult to say from whom the smile was first inherited. Kaoru's face comes back into focus, now bemused, as he blinks. "You weren't thinking about me," she says, "were you?"

It's wiser not to answer that in full. "No and yes."

"So mysterious," she murmurs, but says nothing further, disinclined to follow through. She turns her head and snuggles her cool cheek against his chest, warming his skin. 

He says, "Have you noticed how closely these marks resemble your own?" 

She raises her head, and he brushes his finger against the freckle on her own skin, beneath her eye, and then, beneath her nose. He counts them as well, as he does so, finishing on the one almost on the same axis as the one beneath her nose.

"There're more," she says.

"I'm done counting, for now."

Her smile is brief but sly. "I know what you're doing. You can't fool me."

He inhales, slow and deep. She says, "Sorry for squashing you," and slides off. She props herself up, with both of her elbows and forearms, on her stomach. He turns to his side, also up on his elbow. 

"I know what you're doing, too."

All she does is close her eyes, smile, and tip her head forward, quiet and unprotesting assent. 

"Tell me, have you often tallied these marks?"

"Never with touching, before."

He moves closer. "Why now?"

"Because I can."

"You don't care much for how others view you."

"Yes, but even I know it's not done to -- we keep these things to ourselves, right?" 

She doesn't wait for an answer, curiously discouraging it by closing her eyes, and bending her head down, her hair obscuring her face. He pushes it aside, tucking it behind her ear, watching as her face relaxes, as she responds to the touch of his hand, following the curve of her ear, into her hair, moving his hand so that it conforms to the nape of her neck, fingertips just under the collar of her soft cotton shirt.

He says, "That's logical," and doesn't care that he's just talking for the sake of saying something, to disguise that her response, so simple, so pleasant, is more of a distraction than she probably intends. The skin of her neck and shoulders is cool, even under the weight of her hair, and he fans his fingers there, then closes them. She sighs, falls down on the bed, a floppy rag doll, with her face pressed into the sheets. His hand is left hanging, for a moment of indecision, but instead of withdrawing it, he places it where it was, then traces down her back, working folds out of her cotton shirt. She stretches under his fingers, makes one small noise he deciphers as pleasure, but even the lightest of brushes over her ribs doesn't incite more -- no giggles from her, no ticklish reaction. It's mildly unfair.

"No, it's not," she mumbles. She turns her head, away from him, so that he can't see her face. "Nothing about us makes any sense." Her expression is hidden, and her voice is devoid of any feeling as well. Unreadable, and disconcerting, he finds. 

"Would you want it to?"

He slips his hand under the hem of her shirt, and it's there that he finds warmth, and a gratifying reaction, when she exclaims, "Hey!" She jolts away, going to her side, but still facing him. Her shirt rides up, showing skin.

"I thought you weren't ticklish," he challenges.

"You surprised me!"

He stretches his hand toward her face, and though her face goes still and a little suspicious she doesn't move. He touches the two freckles on her cheek again. "You started it."

She gapes at him. He carefully keeps his face deadpan. Her mouth closes into a smile, exasperated, but fond. "Fair point," she says. She again lets her head loll forward, but she raises it again a second later, her face sharp. "I can't believe you said that without sounding like you were grumbling."

"I don't grumble, especially when it's just a fact."

"Is that so?"

"I'm not interested in arguing the point."

"Neither am I." She stares at him for a moment, then takes his hand in hers, pushing their palms together, and entwining their fingers.

"I suppose," he muses, sometime later, "that we don't have to make sense."

"Because?"

"Because... what would be the fun in that?"

"That's the most sense you've made in years."

"Be qui--"

"Shhh," she whispers against his lips. "I'm not the only one who talks too much, either."


End file.
